Science Fiction and Paranormal Fantasy with a Noir Twist
Today I’m in the spotlight at The Poetics Project, thanks to Amanda Riggle who did the interview and posted it. She asked some really good questions about the writing process and some of the decisions that went into The Girl at the End of the World. Head over to The Poetics Project and have a look.
The semester is coming to an end, and I’m watching my Developmental Writing students take their final exams after sixteen weeks of struggling through increasingly difficult reading and writing assignments. Some of them come up to me at the end of the exam to thank me for being an “awesome” teacher–which I have my doubts about, but I accept their compliments. Some of them just leave, and that’s okay, too.
I’ve been at this for more than twenty years now and have figured out a few good ways to help struggling students along in their journeys toward self-expression. How many of them have gone on to master the rigors of muddy academic writing, I don’t know, but I hope that a handful have at least reached an appreciation for the written word and what they can do with it if they just put their minds to the task–and give themselves plenty of time.
For many of those 20+ years, I was the closeted college-professor-who-wants-to-be-a-novelist. And I stayed in the closet because I really didn’t want to be that guy, didn’t want to be one more cliché professor who’s waiting for his big break–the literary equivalent of the waiter who’s auditioning for acting roles.
I was also pretty much haunted by what I saw as George Bernard Shaw’s condemnation of me: “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.” My definition of writer for much of that time wasn’t “someone who writes” but rather “someone who’s published,” or more accurately, “someone who makes a living by writing.” That last was something I could not do (still haven’t), and so in the Shavian sense, I had slipped into teaching by default: I was teaching because I couldn’t do the thing I wanted, an admission of failure in every lecture, every stroke of the red pen, every start and end of a semester.
And, of course, every rejection letter just added to my certainty that I was clearly in the second part of the Shaw quotation: the cannot-ing teachers.
Fortunately, somewhere along the way, I redefined writer. A writer writes, after all. That’s what I tell my students at the start of each semester. Whether it’s term papers or poems or journal entries (or blogs) or rejected novels, it’s all writing.
And along with that changed definition came another way to look at success. The indie movement in publishing has allowed a whole new way for writers to find their audience, bypassing the gatekeeper of the agent/publisher. So now, just about anybody can, even some who probably shouldn’t.
So here I sit, watching my students finish their exams, my third full-length novel now available for sale and already in the hands (or Kindles) of several readers. A writer and a teacher.
I think Shaw had it wrong. Those who teach, can do, too.
Like a lot of people, when I jumped into the world of indie publishing, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I knew how to write and edit, and I’d gotten a lot of positive feedback from people who knew what they were talking about. Publishing an e-book through Amazon’s KDP program and setting up a paperback through Createspace seemed easy enough, far easier than the cycle of queries and rejections I’d been on for the years leading up to my decision to go indie.
So I released my first book, Take Back Tomorrow. And I waited for the sales to roll in. People who knew me bought the book. And they even read it. And they told their friends about it. In the first three months, I sold around 40 copies. Off to a good start, I told myself. And then, at around 42 sales, everything dried up.
So I moved on, getting my next book ready to go; this one was a novella. When I released it, it had maybe 5 downloads the first week. And not many after that.
And it was at that point that I thought, “Maybe I need a web site…”
Now, with 2 novels and 2 novellas out there and one more that I’m getting ready to release, I’ve finally figured out a thing or two about marketing. Not that I’m enjoying wild success or anything…but at least I’ve learned a few things that I wish I’d known back then. So, in an effort to help others who are jumping in with both feet, here are a few things that I wish I’d known when I started.
1. You Need a Web Site. Readers need a place to find you. There are lots of options for setting up a web site pretty inexpensively. At the very least, you should have a static page with your book covers and blurbs and links to the places where your book is available. If you’re more ambitious, you can set up a blog, which I think is a good idea: the more content you have available online, the greater the chance that people looking for your kind of writing will find you.
2. Give It Away Now. When I first learned about Amazon’s Kindle Select program, where you can make your book free for 5 days each quarter and earn 0 royalties on the books you give away, I thought, “No way!” The point is to sell books, not give them away. But I slowly became a convert. Most indie writers are unknowns, and people aren’t always willing to risk even 3 or 4 dollars on an unknown writer. They are, however, willing to risk 0 dollars. Yes, there’s some debate as to whether readers actually value those free books, but I’ve found that if I use some of the free book promo sites around my free days, there’s a little bump in sales that follows. Also, after giving away between 100 and 5000 books in a couple of days (results vary widely), there’s usually been a little trickle of reader reviews that have followed, and those were well worth all the freebies. Another strategy having to do with free books is to make the first book in a series permanently free to hook your readers.
3. Your Book Needs Reviews. As I mentioned above, readers don’t know you. Unless the elusive, magical thing called “word of mouth” has kicked in for you, they’re not likely to trust your blurb that the book you’re selling is the greatest thing ever. Contact bloggers and book reviewers; send them free copies of your book in exchange for honest reviews. Most book bloggers have a huge To-Be-Read list, so it’s tough to get them to commit, but if you contact enough of them, you’re likely to land a few reviews. Even if the people who follow their blogs don’t actually buy your book, just having those reviews and star ratings on Amazon should help others decide to give your book a chance.
4. It Pays to Advertise. You may have warm fuzzy feelings about your book, and you may know in your heart that it’s the best thing ever, but all your good feelings won’t generate sales. This is a business, and there’s a LOT of competition. Life would be so much easier if there weren’t so many people with the same dream as you, but that’s not the way of it. So, while your book should be able to stand on its own merits and attract readers across the universe just because of its glorious vibes, that’s not likely to happen. Drop a few bucks on an ad or two, maybe on Facebook, maybe a guaranteed spot on one of the Free Book promo sites. Try to get your book featured at Book Bub (but be willing to pay a lot for it). Note: the ads won’t always pay for themselves in generated sales, but it’s worth trying.
5. It’s All About Community. If all you’re doing is shouting “Buy my book!” from the rooftops, you’ll likely find that there are a bunch of other people on other rooftops and that your shouts are drowning each other out. Instead, it’s helpful to work on making connections with other writers and readers. Look at the groups on Goodreads, join a writers’ community at Google+, read other people’s blogs and offer comments and advice. If people start seeing your name and seeing you’re generous and thoughtful, they may mention you or your book in their posts, may reference your blog posts in their own, may even buy your book or review it next time it’s offered free or at a bargain.
And here’s the best piece of advice I’ve ever heard about indie publishing, so important that it’s not getting a number.
Cliche? Maybe. But true. You’re not likely to set the publishing industry on fire with the release of your book. But if you work at it, connect with others, write another book and another one after that, chances are you will develop a readership–not one that may ever set anything on fire, but small successes? There’s a good chance.
What things have you learned about this business that you wish you’d known when you started?
I’ve had books for sale on Amazon for more than a year-and-a-half now and have had the good fortune to rack up quite a few reviews, mostly 4 and 5 stars but a few stinkers. I know there are some writers who claim not to read their reviews, but I’m not one of them. I have come to embrace the idea that readers are the new gatekeepers of the literary world–not so much agents any more–and I want to see what my readers think. Even when what they think isn’t so nice.
When I got my first negative review (and it wasn’t entirely negative, mind you), I was incensed because the reviewer made some personal comments about me and what she perceived were my politics based on some characters in my book. I talked to people, who calmed me down, and started developing a new layer of the thick skin I used to count on when waiting for agents’ rejection letters.
And then that review was followed by lots of positive ones, so I felt better again. The balance in my world had been restored.
Or had it?
The negative review, I’ve often found, is motivated by some specific thing that let the reader down. I’ve had readers comment negatively on the lack of science in my time travel novel and the reliance on tropes having to do with virtual reality in Strictly Analog. In those cases, there was something in the books that took the readers out of the plot, caused their suspension of disbelief to falter, and they had a negative reading experience. It wasn’t just that they didn’t “get it”–in fact, they didn’t enjoy it. My fault? No. Just a poor match between reader and book.
It’s easy to write off those negative reviews and bask in the positive ones, but in many cases I’ve found there’s also some bias in the good reviews–a book clicks with a reader because it reminds him/her of events or places or people the reader is fond of; or because the reader was amused or aroused or intrigued or curious. The reader was able to suspend disbelief and was taken to another world populated by characters the reader could care about. Mission accomplished. Does that make me a genius? No. My book found its audience; that’s all.
Of course, if a writer is getting reviews that complain about typos and poor editing, holes in the plot, character inconsistency, lack of interest, a dud ending, etc. then it’s time for that writer to pull the book and hire an editor. Fortunately, I haven’t had any reviews like that, but I would argue that even those can be useful for writers, showing them their shortcomings and motivating them to improve.
I recently ran across a negative review of Strictly Analog on a blog (and was grateful that the blogger opted not to post the review to Amazon) in which the reviewer criticized the handling of technology in the book, arguing that some of it was inconsistent with the other tech in the novel and that there was far too much time spent explaining the technology rather than developing plot and character. Rather than being a knee-jerk complaint based on the reader’s biases, this was actually an intelligent, thoughtful, well-reasoned critique that gave me a lot to think about. The bottom line was still that this reader, I suppose because of his own techie knowledge and lots more reading in the genre, couldn’t suspend disbelief, kept being taken out of the world of the novel, but I was still able to learn something from the review.
Ideally, that should be the function that reviews perform for writers. They may or may not affect sales: most people tend to look only at the overall star rating and maybe read the first one or two reviews, never getting down to the real stinkers. But for the writer, it can be helpful to try reading between the lines of those reviews, to look for the places where a book failed a reader as well as the places where a book grabbed a reader and wouldn’t let go. That’s what we want to do, after all. And it’s good for writers to know how close they’re getting to the mark.
At the same time, it’s important not to be misled by the gushing praise. That may be as biased and knee-jerk as the barbs.
We need to look for the reasoned, analytical, and carefully considered reviews. Those are the ones most likely to shed some real light on how a book is doing. The rest, treat with interest, but not as weighty deciders of one’s fate.
So…I wonder about other writers: do you take it personally when your work gets a thumbs-down? And as a reader, what sorts of things prompt you to write and post a review?
It’s a Get Smart reference–by which I’m dating myself. That’s okay. There are worse things.
For those not in the know, super agent Maxwell Smart would drop the catch phrase, “Missed it by that much,” after failing at some almost awesome move in the old spy satire TV series. He was blissfully unaware of what a buffoon he was, mainly because he kept defeating his slightly more buffoonish enemies at every turn.
The old catch phrase popped into my head yesterday when I received my latest rejection letter.
It’s nothing new. I’ve been getting publishers’ rejections for more than 20 years now. And agents’ rejections. And editors’ rejections. Like Eddie Royce, the pulp science fiction writer in Take Back Tomorrow, I’ve come to look for that first negative word in the publisher’s response, the one that sets the tone for what follows. Yesterday it was “unfortunately,” but sometimes it’s “sorry” or “regret.” They’ve almost always been polite and almost always end with encouragement as well as some indication that the rejection wasn’t anything personal; often, there’s a phrase about the manuscript somehow “not fitting” in with the publication schedule, the rest of the list, etc.
Rejection is never easy, but I’ve gotten hardened to it. It doesn’t tear me up the way it used to, partly because I’ve also received some acceptances (from magazines rather than book publishers, but a thumb’s up is a thumb’s up no matter how you look at it). And I’ve also gotten some real approval from the new gatekeepers of the indie publishing revolution–the readers who’ve given me lots of 4 and 5 star reviews, enthusiastic emails, and a definite feeling of validation. The publishers who passed on my work may not have been wrong–my books very well may not have matched their needs. But then again, the readers who’ve found my books and thoroughly enjoyed them are proof that people other than editors value my writing. My kind of success may not be enough to finance an editor’s or agent’s lifestyle, but it’s getting the job done as I define it.
So why did I subject myself to one more round of rejection when I’ve already hung up my “Indie Author” shingle? Old habits die hard, I suppose. With three books independently published by last November, I saw a notice that a small but respectable press was opening its e-book line to unagented authors. I had a manuscript that I’d been sitting on for a little while, and it fit the description of what they were looking for, so I sent it in. If they passed on it, I’d go the KDP route as I had with my other books. No harm, no foul. Right?
The 4-month reading period came to an end and I hadn’t heard anything. So I let a few weeks go by before emailing and got a nice reply–the book had made it past the first reader and was on to the second. If both readers agreed, the book would go on to the editors. Another month went by, and then another. More polite queries followed and more polite answers came back. The book had made it past the second reader and was waiting for the editors to decide. It was hard not to feel hopeful in the face of those little victories, but I knew not to get too excited about the possibilities. Finally, after seven months, the decision came…with that “unfortunately” coming along a couple of sentences in.
So it goes.
What would acceptance have meant for me? A bump in sales for my books? Probably (wouldn’t take much). An increase in my fan base? Maybe. Some money? Yes, but probably not a life changing amount. Validation? Yes, but more valuable than what I already get from my readers? Not necessarily.
I’m pretty sure it would have meant giving up some control–of editing, marketing, cover design, and other things I can’t even imagine.
But here’s what it really would have meant: fantasy fulfillment. The dream I’ve had for more years than I care to count would actually have come true. It’s the same carrot that was dangled in front of me in the days when I had an agent and my books were sent out to (and rejected by) the Big 6 and lots of the little publishers, too.
I can’t let myself look at it that way, though. If I think of my books as rejected, as also-rans, as not-quite-good-enough, it’s terrible. If I walk through Barnes and Noble and look at the shelves as being full of accepted books, it’s like running a gauntlet, like telling myself those other writers grabbed the brass ring and I’m still going in circles. That’s the wrong way to look at it, though. Instead, I have to think of the validation I have received and view my books simply as being in a separate category.
I’ve heard it said that rejection is good for writers, that it forces them to write better, to push themselves and find ways to make their writing stronger. I think this is true, especially of beginning writers. I know rejection has pushed my growth as a writer. But in the case of this latest rejection, I know the manuscript didn’t get the axe because it’s not good enough. It is a good book. The first and second readers felt that way about it, meaning other writers who started the process at the same time got their rejections a long time before I did. And the editors liked it, just not as much as they liked some others. Or, should I say, they saw other books as having greater potential to help their publishing house continue to do well. Mine? Not so much.
So, from where I sit, that’s a victory.
Maxwell Smart kept missing the bad guy, but CONTROL beat KAOS in every episode, and Max got the girl, too. Maybe I haven’t been missing my target all these years, but rather just aiming at the wrong one.
Whenever it’s time to start talking about the art of revision with my college writing students, I usually begin by saying if they want to revise effectively they first need to put some distance between themselves and what they’ve drafted. Being too close to one’s material often causes a writer to see it for what he or she thinks it is rather than for what it really is. This accounts for students omitting words, repeating words, or failing to see that they’ve written the wrong word. I forget the context, but I once had a student who wanted to write the phrase “sex with your partner” but instead wrote “sex with your parent.” Eeew. That student could have benefited from a little distance; a few days between drafting and revising would have allowed the writer to see the words as they were, not what they were supposed to be.
I recently ran into a different sort of problem with my own writing. It wasn’t a misused or omitted word (although I’ve had plenty of those show up long after a book’s been proofread, edited, and published). No, it was more a case of misused tone and emphasis. And it wasn’t in a book or story, but rather in the blurb for my novel, Strictly Analog.
I should start by saying that copy writing is not my strong suit. I really, really dislike it. The same was true of synopsis writing in the days of trying to land an agent. Ick. Having to condense a whole book into a few paragraphs, making it sound compelling without giving too much away, convincing someone to buy or read the book when there are so many other choices out there…talk about pressure.
The downside to being an indie writer is that I have to do all of this myself. No publisher’s budget with a section for copy writing and advertising. The advantage, though, is that if there’s a mistake, I can fix it, and quickly. No waiting for the next print run. I can just go into my Amazon account and tweak the blurb to my heart’s content.
If you haven’t read Strictly Analog, let me say that it’s something of a hybrid, blending dystopian science fiction and hard-boiled noir-style mystery. It’s about a private detective in a near-future California that’s run by a high-tech corporation and where just about everyone–except the hero–is constantly plugged in to the technology that runs society. When his daughter is accused of murdering her boyfriend–an agent with California’s Secret Police–the protagonist has to drag himself out of the virtual hole he’s been in for years in order to save her.
I think of the book primarily as science fiction, but with a plot involving mystery and a tone reminiscent of old hard-boiled detective novels and films. Think The Big Sleep in a high-tech dystopia. It’s science fiction not just because it’s set in the future but because the murder and the case’s solution are linked integrally to future technology and because the novel uses its characters and futuristic plot (including the murder mystery) to comment on today’s social and technological trends. It uses mystery as a catalyst, but that doesn’t make it a mystery per se. I wouldn’t expect military science fiction to be placed on the same shelves as military fiction, nor would I expect humorous science fiction (say, Hitchhiker’s Guide) to be on the “Humor” shelves. Yes, the book is a hybrid, but I’m sure that anyone who reads it would still see it predominantly as science fiction in the same way most viewers wouldn’t confuse Blade Runner (or at least the original voice-over edit) with mystery even though there are cops and missing “persons” and some big questions for the protagonist to answer.
So imagine my surprise to find Strictly Analog listed with mystery books on a site that I was using for a promotional campaign. The person running the site was apologetic and is making it up to me, but explained that the book’s blurb made it sound like contemporary mystery rather than science fiction, adding that one reviewer compared the book to those of Lee Child and James Patterson.
No way, I thought and went back to the blurb. It screamed science fiction at me. But then I asked other people’s opinions, mostly in writers’ groups on Google+. And just about everyone who commented said they thought the book was a mystery. Aarghh!
Looking at it more objectively, I saw where they were coming from. Words like private detective, murder, case, etc. were scattered throughout the blurb. And while it clearly said “future California” in the first line, if someone were just skimming the blurb, the word future wouldn’t be enough to sound the science fiction alarm. One person pointed out that the the future technology referenced in the blurb wasn’t that far ahead of where we are now, so it was easy to focus more on the mystery elements of the blurb than the SF elements.
I couldn’t believe it. The blurb’s been out there that way since last September. “You idiot!” I shouted at myself in my best Peter Lorre imitation. I’d been too close to the book, too close to the blurb. I may as well have written “sex with your parent.” How could I have not have seen it?
The answer is that there’s a learning curve here, and every now and then I wipe out on it. Writing I’m good at. Marketing I’m just figuring out.
Needless to say, I went back into the blurb and fixed it, doing more to emphasize the science fiction elements of the story. You can read the blurb here. I’d be interested in hearing if it grabs your attention or not. But please, if you think maybe it’s a Western now, or Chick Lit, or an erotic bondage thriller…keep it to yourself. There are some things I’d rather not know.
Every so often, I get this kind of comment from people: “I’m really enjoying your work. It’s better than I would have expected from an indie writer. Have you ever tried getting an agent?”
It’s quite flattering to hear, and I’m very happy to be getting this kind of feedback from readers.
But on the other hand, there’s just a bit of frustration that I feel as well. The implication is that it would be better to have an agent, better to be traditionally published. And the corollary to those thoughts is that, without an agent and a traditional publisher, my writing isn’t reaching its full potential.
To which I have to respond, well, yes. That’s true. In a good month, I can sell around 30 books. If I had an agent and a publisher–with a budget and a website and the pull to get my books into libraries and brick-and-mortar bookstores, to set up book tours and signings, to get reviews in Kirkus or Publishers Weekly…my guess is that I’d be selling more than 30 a month.
But maybe I wouldn’t. One does hear stories of writers who get fat little advances from publishers and their books then proceed to sell very few copies. One hears about writers being told they need to develop their own websites, book their own tours and signings, etc. One hears about publishers that budget very little for publicity and only for a very short time…the less well-known a writer is, the littler and the shorter the money and time.
I can’t help but feel that in many ways I’m better off going it alone.
Here’s the thing, though: once upon a time, I did have an agent.
I’ve been at this a while. Before diving into my teaching career 20+ years ago, I tried getting a novel published without an agent. That got me nowhere. And then, about six years ago I decided I needed to get back into writing and got really serious about it, ending up with a pretty solid manuscript for the book that eventually became Take Back Tomorrow. This time around, though, I wasn’t going to mess with the listings for publishers in Writers’ Market. I was going to query agents.
And I did. And I did. And I did.
After a year of trying, I did get one request for the full manuscript and was thrilled. After three months of not hearing back, I started sending follow-ups. These were met with “need more time” replies. I won’t name names, but this guy was a pretty well known agent at the time. Knowing that, I didn’t pull the plug on the submission. And eventually I got the rejection, based on the agent’s overall dislike of time travel stories. Why he’d requested the ms in the first place is still beyond me.
However, still being serious about writing, I’d been at work on a second book, about shape shifting aliens invading 1940s Hollywood. When I was done with that, I started querying agents on both books. After lots of outright rejections and even more “passive” rejections (the kind where the agent just doesn’t bother responding to a query), I found an agent who wanted to read the new ms. She ended up liking the book but “not falling in love with it.” I was tenacious and wrote back saying, “You know, if you kind of liked this one, I do have another.”
She took a look at Take Back Tomorrow, had some reservations about it, but 
overall felt it “deserved publication.” She ended her email saying that if I was willing to engage in some radical revision, she’d be happy to represent me.
I jumped at the chance. After a few months, the revision was ready and the book went out. It got what I still think of as “positive rejection.” One editor, I think at Random House, called it a “page turner” and another praised my “nimble prose.” But all the major and minor houses that looked at the book found some reason to pass on it.
It was both disappointing and exciting. On the one hand, I’d thought having an agent was like getting my foot in the door; finally, someone in the publishing industry believed in me, someone who knew people in one of those it’s-who-you-know industries. Plus, just about everyone who knew about my finally landing an agent acted as though it was a foregone conclusion: with an agent, I’d get published. So, when it didn’t happen, it was kind of a drag. But on the other hand, I’d had my book looked at (and rejected) by Random House and several other major publishers. Just knowing that was pretty damned thrilling.
At any rate, I continued on, doing a more radical revision on the alien invasion story (converting the aliens to demons), and then that book went out…with the same kind of results.
When I was ready to start the next book, I ran several ideas by the agent to see what she thought would be the most saleable. Aliens? No, aliens were definitely out. A literary SF drug addiction story? No, sounds too dark and depressing. A murder mystery set in a high tech dystopia? Okay.
So it was on to Strictly Analog. I must admit I didn’t like being told which book I should write next, but then again I did ask for advice. Still I had to wonder how many published writers had to get their agents to green light their next project.
I pinned a lot of hope on Strictly Analog, thought it might be the straw that broke the camel’s back if the agent couldn’t sell it. After all, she was in the business of selling books, representing authors whose work she could make some commission off of. It turned out that the book didn’t really have a chance. The agent released me, citing her increased interest in representing non-fiction and dwindling contacts among SF publishers and editors.
She did refer me to several other agents with more experience in SF…but they all failed to “fall in love” with the book, so I was on my own again.
And within a few months I had self-published Take Back Tomorrow and started down the path that’s gotten me here…an indie writer with not a lot of sales, 2 novels and 2 novellas to his credit, and a small but slowly developing fan base.
Am I better off without an agent? Right now, probably. I have control over what I write and how I market it. Am I as successful as I would have been if the agent had been able to make it work? Probably not, but given things I hear about traditional publishing, I might very well be in just about the same position as I am now even if one or all of my books had been picked up by a publisher.
Am I better off for having had an agent? Absolutely. The experience taught me an awful lot about writing…about pacing and development and sub-plots and misdirection, about editing out the passive constructions and adverbs and strings of prepositional phrases.
If nothing else, it gave me just a glimpse into the industry I’d been dying to get into since the early 1990s and showed me that maybe it wasn’t everything I’d hoped for.
Who knows? Maybe with the next book, I’ll query a few agents before self-publishing just to see what happens. At least now I’ve got a fallback position, and those rejections won’t hurt as much. I don’t need an agent to fall in love with my writing for it to be a success…just a few readers, and that’s already happening.
What about other indie writers? Do you wish you had an agent? Have you had one and parted ways? Or are you sticking to your indie guns and going it alone?
I don’t sell a lot of books.
Not yet, anyway.
And I think I’m making peace with that.
But it’s a rather uneasy peace, kind of a tentative peace, one subject to tremors and the occasional shake-up of the conditions that have produced it.
But peace nevertheless. The alternative is frustration and depression. And those are things that lead to quitting, which I’m not about to do.
I’m not alone. There are countless other indie writers out there, all of us competing in one way or another for the small number of readers who are dedicated to finding the hidden gems not put out by traditional publishers, reviewed by traditional reviewers, advertised by…well, you get it.
The odds of “making it” as a writer have always been slim. When traditional publishing was the only game in town, the ratio of rejections to offers of publication was astronomical (I’ll bet someone has data on this, but I’m going to go with conventional wisdom and assume it’s true). These days, it’s more a case of the ratio between the number of books available (indie and otherwise) and the number of readers willing to pull the trigger and actually buy a book by an unknown author. Readers have thousands and thousands of choices, and indie authors are all pretty much trying the same things to reach those readers.
So to continue writing and publishing in the face of these odds requires a bit of nerve, a bit of audacity, a lot of hope. To succeed requires those things as well as talent and luck and a lot of hard work.
I’ve written before about the luck part. Now I’d like to talk about the hope. That’s what’s required, at least for me, if I want to keep that peace I mentioned earlier. I believe in my writing. I’ve had enough people tell me it’s good. I’ve had enough people tell me it’s really good. And still, not a lot of people have found it. Certainly not the right acquisitions editors.
So it’s a question of looking on the bright side, of relishing the small victories. For example: a very nice person contacted me last week to say how much she’d enjoyed Strictly Analog. I thanked her for it and took the opportunity to ask if she’d be willing to put together a brief review on Amazon to let others know how she felt about the book. The result was quite flattering, calling me the “Lee Child or James Patterson of futuristic literature” and comparing my narrator to Jack Reacher or Alex Cross. Another reviewer suggested that William Gibson should be worried about me as a competitor.
That’s high praise. Super high praise. But the part of me that’s still frustrated, the part of me that feels a bit inadequate by having to use indie to preface the description of myself as writer, the part that’s still bruised from years of rejection letters and unanswered queries…that part of me wants to go negative and shake that peace I’ve made over not selling many books. Strictly Analog is good; the people who’ve bothered to tell me or the Amazon community about it have agreed that it’s really good. Sure, there are readers who didn’t like it or were indifferent, but none have been motivated to say so.
So if it’s that good and it only sells a handful of copies every month, what good is all the praise? Where does it get me?
And here’s where the hope part comes in, the part where I remind myself what it’s all about. I’m not writing to make Lee Child-style money. If I was, I’d have quit a long time ago. Instead, I’m writing because I love doing it. I’m writing because I can’t not write. And because of readers like the one who contacted me last week, I know I’ve written something really good. If masses of people never get to find that out, so be it. I won’t say it’s not frustrating to be hanging out here on the edges of obscurity, but I take comfort in knowing I have entertained a handful of people and in knowing that my writing is good enough to make it.
It just hasn’t yet.
My guess is that a lot of struggling writers deal with the same things. You can’t give up, though. You just can’t. Look for the bright side. It’s bound to be there somewhere.
When I started blogging last August, I did it primarily because advice column after advice column said that having a blog was essential to the success of indie authors. I hadn’t done much to promote my first two releases, and the sales numbers showed it, especially with the first Ace Stubble novella, Dead Man’s Hand. So I thought, why not? I started the blog, built up the site, and diligently posted at least once a week.
I was new not only to blogging but also to WordPress and soon discovered the “Freshly Pressed” page and thought, That would be cool. Getting freshly pressed would drive a lot of viewers to my page, get a lot more people to look at my books. So in the back of my mind as I was creating posts, I’d wonder, Maybe this one’ll get Freshly Pressed. And, of course, they wouldn’t.
Not that it soured in me on the blogging experience. After a while, I forgot about getting onto the Freshly Pressed list. I was having a good time blogging, had picked up a handful of followers, and generally enjoyed having this as an outlet for my non-fictional writing.
Not long ago, though, I began to question the effectiveness of blogging as a tool for indie writers. You can see my post on the subject here, but in a nutshell, I wondered about the goals of the fiction writer/blogger in relation to the needs of blog readers. I reached the conclusion that blogging may not help me reach my goal of attracting more readers, but it is a valuable thing in and of itself and may help me function more as part of a community of bloggers/writers/readers.
So that was the mindset I had going into this week when I published a post examining the issue of random chance and how it affects a writer’s success. I wasn’t thinking about the possibility of it getting freshly pressed or drawing in more readers or anything else beyond just what it was–a blog post that might or might not connect with other people’s views on the subject of writing and publishing.
And that was the post that got freshly pressed. The first day it had something like 49 views. Pretty good for me. My highest day before that had been 63. But then the next day I started noticing I was getting a bunch of new followers. And then the comments started coming in. That’s weird, I thought. After about an hour of this, I decided to look at the Freshly Pressed page at WordPress, and there was my post looking back at me.
That day, I had 341 visitors and over 500 views. The next day, I had 450 visitors and over 700 views. The comments kept poring in, along with “likes” and new followers. Based on the comments, the post hit a nerve; lots of writers and artists have felt the same way about random chance as it affects success and many thanked me for coming out and saying it.
But what about the bottom line? Did getting Freshly Pressed lead to a lot of book sales? That’s probably what all the writers-who-blog are wondering. The answer is…nope. My sales stayed about the same as they’d been the week before.
Disappointing? Not really. It’s the kind of thing I’ve gotten used to. There have been several times over the last year where I thought there was a chance for something “big” to happen with sales: having links for my books appear on the pages of The Colored Lens, a magazine I’ve been published in twice; having Take Back Tomorrow selected by a large book club on GoodReads (resulted in, I think, 1 sale); paying for advertising on a major indie book site (resulted in 0 sales), etc.
The thing I’m learning is that people don’t necessarily go online looking to discover new books. They’re going for information. Most of the people reading blogs are other bloggers, and most of the people reading blogs about writing are other writers, not readers or potential readers. Sure, writers read, but they’re finding new books the way they always have–mostly through word of mouth, the number one thing the “experts” claim will lead to a writer’s success. They’re not clicking Amazon links on the blogs of other writers; instead, they’re looking to pick up a few tips and tricks that other writers have used to generate sales in hopes of doing the same themselves.
At least that’s one possibility. The other is that my website sucks and people aren’t clicking on my links because I’m no good at making them want to. I still have a lot to learn.
If I’m going to look at the commercial outcome of getting Freshly Pressed, I’d have to say it was a failure. But I’m not looking at it that way. Instead, I’m looking at the fact that my book covers crossed the screens of some 800 people over a day and a half, and probably a few hundred more in the days to come. Some of those people may have bookmarked the page, or put my books in their “to read” lists. Most didn’t. Most probably aren’t into science fiction, or at least not the quirky little sub-genre that I’m occupying.
And that’s okay. Because in the end, I’ve learned, it’s not about sales. It’s not about screaming “Buy My Books!” as loud and as long and as often as I can. Instead, it’s about making connections. And I’ve connected with a lot of people over the last few days, people who see writing the same way I do even if they’re not into science fiction. I have three times as many followers today as I did on Monday. And I’m hoping they stick around. A few of them are bound to like science fiction, or have friends who do. But even if they don’t, that’s okay, too.
Before I started publishing independently, I felt very alone in my endeavors. I don’t feel so alone anymore. Not being able to sell a book when I felt isolated was terribly depressing. Not selling many books when I’ve got this many people along for the ride anyway…that’s not so bad.
I read a lot posts about marketing and selling books. For the most part, they say the same thing. To succeed, a writer (indie or otherwise) needs to:
I’ve been wondering, though, if one more thing shouldn’t be added to the list: To succeed, a writer needs to be really lucky.
I can hear the howls now: Luck has nothing to do with it! It’s all about talent and perseverance and building a community of readers…
True. It’s hard to imagine success without those things, but I still think a measure of luck has something to do with it, at least in some cases.
And let me add right away that I’m not blaming my shortcomings as a writer on my lack of luck. And I’m not bitching about other people being luckier than me. I place most of the blame for my shortcomings on the fact that I’m a novice marketer, trying to learn the ropes as I go after having spent the last thirty-plus years learning my craft and living with the illusion that I’d eventually land a deal with a publisher who’d do all that marketing for me.
For the most part, I’ve been trying to do all those things in the bullet points above, some better than others. Success hasn’t exactly been forthcoming, but it depends on how one measures success. To keep from failing at that last bullet point, I measure success in terms of just having books that are out there and having had some readers find them through my efforts (directly or indirectly) and be entertained by my storytelling. If I measured success in the hundreds of dollars or in averaging one sale per day in an average month, then the measurement would fall short. I’m not there yet. But I can live with it.
I’m just finishing a week of free promos for my books after having launched the second in my Ace Stubble series, Unfinished Business. I noticed that on the days when Take Back Tomorrow was free, there were a lot of downloads (68) through the German arm of Amazon. Out of curiosity, I did a Google search and found that a German free-book-promo site had picked up the listing for my book and featured it; so there are 68 English-speaking German readers with my book in their Kindles, and a handful of them are likely to read it.
Those are 68 (potential) readers I hooked up with strictly by chance. Yes, the people who say you make your own luck will argue that I put myself out there and thought positively and created the opportunity by making the book free in the first place. But so did several thousand other indie writers on the same day. The people who run that German site picked my book out of thousands and featured it without any other input from me. Maybe they liked the cover, or the selections from book reviews I included in my blog post about the free day. And maybe if I’d listed the book on a different day, the site administrators would have been in a different mood or had their eye caught by a different book. And so it goes.
On other free days, I’ve had other promo sites feature my books, resulting in thousands of free downloads. And on still other days those same books (with the same covers and blurbs and the same outreach on my part to the promo sites) have gone unnoticed, resulting in a couple hundred downloads instead.
It strikes me as rather random. As do other aspects of success.
I was reading another indie writer’s blog where he was analyzing the wild but temporary success he had on Amazon after his novel was featured in an Amazon-generated list of recommended books; his was the only indie book on the list, and he suddenly found himself with sales comparable to the pros his book was rubbing elbows with. Upon investigating, the writer discovered that his book had been included in the list because it looked so good, so professionally put together, that the Amazon editors had assumed this self-published book had come from a small press. While the author did a fantastic job of designing and marketing his book, the fact that it got noticed by these Amazon editors and recommended on a list of professionally designed books was, really, just a matter of luck–something the author was quick to acknowledge.
Why that book and not one of the other thousands of solidly designed indies, or even other professionally published books? Random chance maybe? The editors in a particular mood on a particular day and having some indefinable thing catch their eye that on another day would have slipped right past?
I don’t know the answer, but it does seem to me that random chance has something to do with the reason some writers shoulder ahead of others who are equally good, and oftentimes even better. And those better books never get noticed.
The same probably holds true in traditional publishing where one skilled writer gets picked up by an agent or editor on a given day while an equally skilled writer gets rejected–partly because the first one was in the right place at the right time.
Imagine the previously unpublished author of a teen vampire romance whose query comes up in an agent’s queue the same week that the first Twilight book shoots into the literary stratosphere. The agent snaps the book up and is pitching it to publishers in a heartbeat while the other queries in the queue–all by equally unknown writers, some with more talent and some with less than the author of the Twilight clone–get rejections because the agent can take on only so many new clients.
Surely there are books that deserve rejection, but there are others that, in a different week, would have outshone the book that got signed. Does being lucky guarantee this hypothetical author success? Not at all. But it gives that writer a hell of a better shot at it than the others who go back to the slush pile.
I don’t mean to sound defeatist or to say it’s all about chance. This isn’t sour grapes (I don’t have a bestseller because I never got lucky, etc.). No, talent and marketing and skill and savvy all help put the writer in a position where the odds are better. But it really does seem to me that, at least in some cases, luck is as much a factor as talent.
And in some cases, more.
No one seems to talk about it, though. Maybe because it’s something that can’t be taught–or sold–on a website.
Richard Levesque 